"Like you I love all forms of freedom; and among these, the one that is the most universally useful to mankind, the one you enjoy at each moment of the day and in all of life’s circumstances, is the freedom to work and to trade. I know that making things one’s own is the fulcrum of society and even of human life. I know that trade is intrinsic to property and that to restrict the one is to shake the foundations of the other. I approve of your devoting yourself to the defense of this freedom whose triumph will inevitably usher in the reign of international justice and consequently the extinction of hatred, prejudices between one people and another, and the wars that come in their wake."
["Draft Preface" to Economic Harmonies (1847)]

The book I co-edited of a collection of classical texts in classical liberal and libertarian class analysis, Social Class and State Power: Exploring an Alternative Radical Tradition (Palgrave Macmillan) is now out. See <http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319648934> for details. An online version of a much larger draft of the book (1 million words vs. 250,000) entitled "Parastites, Plunderers, and Plutocrats."

My Introduction to and Translation of Frédéric Passy's speech on "The School of Liberty" (April, 1890) which will appear next year in the Acton Institute'sJournal of Markets & Morality. A draft can be found here.

David M. Hart

David Hart is an historian and a libertarian with interests in the history
of the classical liberal tradition (especially the French), war and culture,
libertarian class theory, and film. He has a PhD from King's College,
Cambridge, a masters from Stanford University, and a BA Honours degree
from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He taught in the Department
of History at the University of Adelaide in South Australia for 15 years
before moving to the US where he now works for a non-profit educational foundation.
[Brief Bio] [More]
[CV 2015]

"Bastiat’s Theory of Class: The Plunderers vs. the Plundered.” This is the Introductory Essay for a bi-lingual edition of Frédéric Bastiat's writings on class and plunder which is in preparation. It is an attempt to reconstruct from his scattered writings on class the History of Plunder he planned to write but never did. The anthology of around 15 texts is in an early stage of editing and will be added later.

Dec. 2017: My Introduction to and Translation of Frédéric Passy's speech on "The School of Liberty" (April, 1890) which will appear next year in the Acton Institute'sJournal of Markets & Morality. A draft can be found here.

Nov. 2016: "Charles Coquelin, Gustave de Molinari, Frédéric Bastiat and the 'Austrian Moment' in French Political Economy 1845-1855: Molinari and the Private Production of Security." Paper given at the Southern Economic Association, Nov. 2016. [HTML - PDF - MS Word]

31 March, 2016: "The Struggle against Protectionism, Socialism, and the Bureaucratic State: The Economic Thought of Gustave de Molinari, 1845-1855”. A Paper given at the Austrian Economics Research Conference (31 March to 2 April 2016), The Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama. Full length paper (book-size) HTML and PDF. [Summary PDF and HTML]. Slides for Lecture [8 MB]

21-23 November, 2015: "Entrepreneurs,
Investors, and Scribblers: An Austrian Analysis of the Structure of Production
and Distribution of Ideas".
A paper given at the Southern
Economics Association, New Orleans, November 21-23, 2015. HTML and PDF.

14 April, 2015: "Literature IN Economics,
and Economics AS Literature I: Bastiat's use of Literature in Defense of
Free Markets and his Rhetoric of Economic Liberty." A paper given at
the Association of Private Enterprise Education International Conference
(April 12-14, 2015) , Cancún, Mexico. HTML and PDF.

14 April, 2015: "Literature IN Economics, and Economics
AS Literature II: The Economics of Robinson Crusoe from Defoe to
Rothbard by way of Bastiat." A paper given at the Association
of Private Enterprise Education International Conference (April 12-14, 2015)
, Cancún, Mexico. HTML and PDF.

28 March, 2015: "The Liberal Roots of American
Conservatism: Bastiat and the French Connection." A paper given to the
Philadelphia Society meeting March 27-29, 2015 on "The
Roots of American Conservatism - and its Future". HTML and PDF.

Books

2017: The book I co-edited of a collection of classical texts in classical liberal and libertarian class analysis, Social Class and State Power: Exploring an Alternative Radical Tradition (Palgrave Macmillan) is now out. See <http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319648934> for details.

2012: French Liberalism in the 19th Century: An Anthology. Edited
by Robert Leroux and David M. Hart (London: Routledge, 2012). [facs.
PDFs of 31 extacts] - the master
collection [79 extracts] in French in HTML and PDF [12 MB]

2011: The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat in
6 vols.

Vol. 1: The Man and the Statesman. The Correspondence and Articles
on Politics (2011) [OLL]

Vol. 2: "The Law," "The State," and Other
Political Writings, 1843-1850 (2012) [OLL]

Vol. 3: Economic Sophisms and "What is Seen and What is Not Seen” (March 2017)

2008: my contributions on French liberals to The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, ed. Ronald Hamowy
(Los Angeles: Sage, 2008. A Project of the Cato Institute).

Classical Liberal Class Analysis

There is a long tradition within classical liberalism of thinking about the state and the ruling elites which control it for their own benefit and at the expense of ordianry tax payers, or "class analysis" as it came to be known.

The New Guillaumin Library of Classical Liberal and Radical Thought

I have named my online library of texts in honour of the 19th century bookseller
and publisher Gilbert-Urbain Guillaumin (1801-64) whose bookshop and publishing
firm was the focal point for the liberal movement in France for nearly three quarters
of a century.

the Guillaumin Library has material on the following schools of Classical Liberal thought:

French Classical Liberal Thought

9 Jan. 2017: "Gilbert-Urbain Guillaumin (1801-1864) and the Guillaumin Publishing Firm." I have updated this page to include a complete list of the books and pamphlets published by the Guillaumin firm between 1837 and 1910. There are 2,359 items.

To commemorate the bicentennial of the founding of their their journals Le Censeur (1814-1815) and Le
Censeur européen ((1817-1819),
the motto of which was "Paix
et liberté" (Peace
and Liberty), I have been editing a collection of their essays

Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912)

The life of the long-lived and prolific French journalist and political economist Gustave
de Molinari (1819-1912) spanned three generations of French classical liberals. He is best known for being the first anarcho-capitalist who thought the competitive free market could and should provide police and defnse services. I would also argue that he was the first person to write a one volume overview of the classical liberal/libertarian world view (along with policy recommnedations) with Les Soirées (1849). Molinari died on 28 January, 1912 which made 2012 the centennial of his death.

War & Peace

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1 which, among
other things, destroyed the liberal poltiical and economic order which
had been built up in the second half of the 19th century, we have put
online some volumes of the Journal des économistes from this
period. One should note the multi-part series on the origins of the war
written by the editor Yves Guyot between August 1914 and April 1915 [PDF
16MB]. This was expanded and published as a book which is also
available in French [PDF
23MB] and English [PDF
8MB].